“It was the most chaotic, yet entertaining thing that I have witnessed here in the last four years,” said Chrissy Szaszfai ’02, of the four and a half hour blackout that enveloped much of the university in darkness Sunday night from approximately 1 a.m. to 5:30 in the morning.
Szaszfai, who is a Resident Assistant in Gonzaga Hall, was on duty during the blackout. “I was wondering why the first instinct for so many students was to run outside, scream, light fire crackers, and throw toilet paper,” she said. “I was on duty, but there was so much chaos that it was out of my hands and more for security and the police department to handle.”
According to Todd Pelazza, director of security, the blackout was caused by a transformer that failed on North Benson road which supplied electricity to much of the university. The outage affected the entire campus except for the townhouses.
Shortly after the blackout began, a huge crowd filled part of the quad between Jogues Hall and Campion Hall. Pelazza said the crowd was estimated at 600-700 people.
Shortly thereafter, Pelazza said that “There were several noise complaints called in to the Fairfield Police Department who responded with two officers. When they saw size of crowd, approximately ten officers responded. Once they did arrive, they asked people to go back into the residence halls and quiet down, within an hour, the crowd dispersed.”
Pelazza also stated that no arrests were made during the blackout.
“It was pure pandemonium the likes of which I’ve never seen on this campus,” said Justin Little ’05.
“It was crazy, the power went out and within an hour, it was like quadfest-fireworks, screaming, flashlights all over-sadly it was probably the most exciting thing that’s happened all year,” said Thom Corsillo ’05.
Other students did not even become aware of the blackout until it was over. “People were pounding on my door the whole time, but I sleep like a log, I didn’t hear anything,” said Nick Hudyma ’04.
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